Lewis shares two anecdotes about dealing with insults and homophobia from strangers in public, in a video recorded at Leeds Pride 2018.

TRANSCRIPT

Hello. My name is Lewis Lepton and I have two very, I guess quite silly, interesting stories about people, I guess, not minding their own business.

When I worked for a charity, I remember walking to work and all of a sudden I heard somebody shot, ‘FAGGOT!’ And I turned around and it was this person who was about seventeen, sixteen years old. And I turned around and just said, ‘Oh yeah? Well at least I don’t have Java installed on my computer!’ And he just looked at me and didn’t know what to say, and left in confusion. It was a sunny day, and that just sort of made me smile for the rest of the day.

My second story: I was coming back from work and I was looking absolutely fabulous on the bus, and a person just comes up to me and just says, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? What do you think you’re doing?’
‘Sorry, darling, I don’t actually understand what you’re implying.’
‘You know, how you’re dressed, what you’re wearing, what’s - how your make-up is looking.’

And I just, had a – I was actually making a joke at the time [gestures with hands to show typing on smartphone]. And I said, ‘OK, OK. Well I want you to carry on talking to me about what it is that’s wrong, this picture of like, you know, what you see – and I’m just going to finish typing this joke. And I’ll listen to you, that’s fine.’

And so I was typing the joke – and I’ll tell you in a second what the joke was – but they were talking, they were saying about how they think it was wrong, you shouldn’t necessarily be this way and you should just be the way that they think I should. And I’d done the joke, and I’d sent the joke and I just said, ‘Well, you know, I’ve listened to what you’ve said and it’s amazing how much I don’t give a shit. So … yeah! Also as well, would you like to hear my joke? OK. My joke said: What noise does a Casiotone synth make during sex? It Casio-moans.’